Installing OpenMeetings on Debian Lenny

On the previous post I showed you what you could do with OpenMeetings. Now it's time to describe how to install it on your own server.

Although you can install it in any version of Linux provided you have access to the proper dependencies, I decided to do the set up on a minimal installation of Debian 5.03 "Lenny", that way I could ensure I identified all the components needed. This will also ensure that if you want to install it in a different Distribution, you have all the elements to do it.

The total installation time was a bit less than two hours. It may be more or less for you depending on the speed of your computer and Internet connection.

You can find the short version of these instructions on the OpenMeeteings website. Those instructions were my starting point. Here I will add all the detail required.

To start you will need the following

A computer to work as the server: Minimum recommended: 1 GHz CPU, 1 GB RAM, 2 GB HDD.
If you don't have an additional computer you can do the installation on a virtual computer. Just ensure you assign enough CPU, RAM and a large enough HDD.From now on I will refer to this computer as the "server"

An Internet connection

An additional computer connected to the same network. The purpose of the second computer is the following
- follow the instructions doing cut and paste instead of typing them manually
- Test the installation at the endFrom now on I will refer to this additional computer as the "local computer"

Install Debian

Although Installing Debian is not in the scope of this post, here is the installation in a nutshell:

Edit the sources list

Add the following two entries at the end of the file:deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian lenny main contrib non-free
deb-src http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian lenny main contrib non-free Note: you can replace the URL with the one for your preferred mirror

Refresh the apt repositoriesaptitude update

Install SSH on the server and connect to it from the local computer

This step is not required but you will save a lot of time using cut and paste instead of typing all the instructions.

Install the openssh-server. I also install "less" as I use it quite frequently:aptitude install openssh-server less

Get the address assigned to the server and write it down.Note: On the following instructions I will use 192.168.1.97 as the server address. Please adapt the address accordingly.ifconfig

On the local computer open a terminal and SSH to the server as rootssh root@192.168.1.97

Now you will have a terminal where to paste the commands that follow in these instructions. You'll be glad that you followed this advice.

Install the required packages and dependencies

This is the step that will take the longest as there are several packages to download and install:

Install swftools version 0.9 or newer. As it is not included in the Debian repositories we will use the Ubuntu installwget -c http://mirrors.kernel.org/ubuntu/pool/universe/s/swftools/swftools_0.9.0-0ubuntu1_i386.deb
dpkg -i swftools_0.9.0-0ubuntu1_i386.deb
apt-get -f install
dpkg -i swftools_0.9.0-0ubuntu1_i386.deb

Install the rest of the components from the repositories.Note 1: This is a very long line. Type it all in a single command line.
Note 2: Don't leave unattended. The installation process will ask to provide a password for MySQL and to accept the java distribution license.aptitude install unzip mysql-server sun-java6-bin imagemagick ghostscript openoffice.org-headless openoffice.org-base openoffice.org-writer openoffice.org-calc openoffice.org-impress openoffice.org-draw openoffice.org-math openoffice.org-filter-mobiledev openoffice.org-filter-binfilter msttcorefonts pstoedit libpaper-utils ttf-dejavu

Install OpenMeetings

We are almost done. It hasn't been too bad, has it?

Get the latest version of OpenMeetings. You can figure out which version you need from the OpenMeetings web site: http://code.google.com/p/openmeetings/downloads/list.
In this case I used version 1.0wget -c http://openmeetings.googlecode.com/files/openmeetings_1_0_r2688.zip

Unzip the downloaded file and move it to the final destination. Although it is OK to put it under whatever folder you prefer, I like puting it under "opt" to be consistent with other software. Also, I name the folder "red5" as the application is actually the red5 server executing the openmeetings applicationunzip openmeetings_1_0_r2688.zip
mv openmeetings_1_0_r2688 /opt/red5

Configure MySQL

OpenMeetings requires MySQL to use UTF8 by default.

Open the MySQL global configuration file with a text editornano /etc/mysql/my.cnf

Comment out the "bind-address" entry on the file

Search for the [client] section and add the following linedefault-character-set=utf8

Search for the [mysql] section and add the following linedefault-character-set=utf8

Open the default configuration file with a text editornano hibernate.cfg.xml

Enter the mysql root password on the connection.password propertyNote: It is advisable to use an ID different than root to connect but configuring it is outside the scope of these instructions. If you use an ID different than root, please adapt this instruction accordingly<property name=”connection.password”>openmeetings</property>

Exit saving the file: [ctrl-x] and accept saving the file

Test the installation

Start openoffice headless

Start red5cd /opt/red5
sh ./red5.sh

Open a browser on the local computer and point it to the following address:http://localhost:5080/openmeetings/install

Follow the instructions on that page.
Once you accept the configuration it may take a long time (about 10 minutes) to complete, so be patient. It is normal.

At the end of the process you will be able to open your first web conference!!!

You are done!... Well, almost.

Set up the startup scripts

Although you can manually start red5 every time, I am sure you'd prefer for it to start as a daemon every time you start the server.
I've created the startup scripts followig the standard Debian init.d conventions. You can find the scripts attached to this post.

Untar the startup scripts and upload them from the local computer to the openmeetings computer.Note: For this you will need to open an additional terminal on the local computertar -xvzf openmeetings-startup.tgz
scp -P 22 red5 root@192.168.1.102:/etc/init.d/red5
scp -P 22 soffice-headless root@192.168.1.97:/etc/init.d/soffice-headless
scp -P 22 soffice-headless.sh root@192.168.1.97:/usr/lib/openoffice/program/soffice-headless.sh

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